And back on an English keyboard, ahhhhh! From Bamako to Bandiagara and back, I saw:

A thousand women carrying baskets of mangoes and peanuts on their heads. A thousand girls doing washing on the riverbanks, making money any way they can since the rains have been so poor.

Hundreds of boys whipping hundreds of donkeys as they pulled carts piled high with hay or garbage or goods for market day.

The outline of a mosque drawn in the sand, where bricks could not be had. Dozens of men kneeling on mats, praying toward the east. Our driver praying at the steering wheel, at 100 km/h.

A hundred motocyclettes putting along, and a hundred bicycles, and dozens more being repaired in the shade on the side of the road. Dozens of bachees careening from village to village, piled high with baggage and stuffed with passengers. One freshly overturned on the side of the road, still being looted. A dozen other carcasses of cars that were nothing more than rusty skeletons with every last bit of useful material removed.

Karite and mango and baobab trees as far as the eye can see.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, captioned in Arabic.

The ribs of a thousand starving cattle, and some who were too weak to stand, bedded down on hay and carted home. A thousand sheep and goats crossing the road in search of more food. Two albino donkeys. A dozen dogs who looked like they were born of the same litter.

The Niger floodplain and the Bani River. From a cliff in the desert, I saw all the way to Burkina Faso. Sandstorms and thunderstorms.

And that's only a fraction of what I saw.